Tips and advice straight from the Lightroom team.

Aperture import plugin now available

As promised in a blog post here, we are proud to introduce the Aperture and iPhoto import plugin for Lightroom 5. The plugin allows Aperture and iPhoto customers to migrate their images and key metadata (such as keywords, events, project structure) into Lightroom catalogs in a seamless way.

For a limited time, Aperture users who subscribe to the Creative Cloud Photography plan get a free 3-month membership to KelbyOne training. Please visit here for more details

EDIT: The Aperture and iPhoto import plugin is now integrated into Lightroom 5. Please ensure that you are using Lightroom 5.7 or later by using the Help->Check for updates menu option in Lightroom 5.

note – we’ve updated the plugin below, so please try this one if you reported problems earlier.

Ensure that you’re using Lightroom 5.6. You can check your Lightroom version by going to Help->System Info inside Lightroom. If not using Lightroom 5.6, please update to the 5.6.

Download the plugin zip file to a known location (such as your desktop)

Double click on the downloaded zip file to extract it.

Navigate to the Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom folder. To do so, use the Go menu item within Finder. Please note that the Library folder is hidden by default and that you will need to hold down the Option/Alt key to make it visible.

Check to see if there is a Modules folder. If not, please create this folder.

Copy the extracted aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin file to the Modules folder.

Apple should be ashamed to drop a professional grade product after such a convincing launch just a few years ago. The reason many bought imacs and macbook pros was for photography, based upon: 1. Aperture, 2. Non-reflective screens on laptops 3. the joy a their now extinct 17″ Macbook pro. All this is now history. And so goes away reasons to buy their hardware. Music and film seems to have blinded Apple to serious photography. Very silly.

People sometimes call me an Apple “fanboi.” Nonetheless, I recognize the truth when I see it. How many times have I obeyed Apple — Get FireWire! Get new OS with 3D interface! Get Ethernet! Get Aperture! Run it on a 17″ MB Pro! — only to have Apple take it all away. In the case of Ethernet and FireWire they abandoned it solely to make the hardware thinner! Function follows form.

Still, for me, the primary reason to buy Apple hardware is still there: the Mac OS. True, I only know Windows as far as Windows 7 Pro, which I use from time to time on two computers, but it’s still a cheap imitation of the Mac OS, IMO.

Does it only import and store by date?
Everything is nicely organized in Aperture’s library by folders. The import is a mess of dated directories. I didn’t see anything about choosing the format like the standard import section has. (All in one folder, by original subfolders, date, etc)

The Plugin Extras -menu only shows Import from iPhoto Library. Import from Aperture Library is gets out
Aperture is installed and I have several Aperture Libraries on the disk
Can somebody help?
Thanks

The ‘Import’ button will stay disabled until the plug-in has been able to establish whether the import is feasible, based on required space, space available, and valid library selection.

Does any field in the dialog say ” after selection of the source library? If so, that may be an indication that a v2 source library isn’t going to work. (The plug-in was written with the latest Aperture/iPhoto database structure in mind and hasn’t been tested with v2 libraries.)

I am trying to import from aperture v3.5.1 with no success. The “import” button in not available (it is grey). I got “undetermined” in the “Number of images/video files” and in the “Disk space required” fields. I do not keep my files in the aperture library. I keep them in the finder. But the aperture library keeps referenced files.
I am running 10.9.4 on a macbook pro
Any tips?
Thanks a lot!

I have tried uninstalling all adobe software and reinstalling.
I have restarted my mac on multiple occasions (yosemite beta 6 in case anyone asks)
I have created new preferences files in LR
I have created new LR libraries
I have tried using different iPhoto / aperture libraries (I have multiple already)

Hi Dom,
I saw same problem.
I guess we have some none-English characters somewhere in the library. And the plugin can not deal with that.
[string “Import.lua”]:1026: attempt to index local ‘albumInfo’ (a nil value)
Here is the content of log:
2014-10-25 10:58:00 +0000, INFO Failed to obtain album info from iPhoto library with error ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode characters in position 2533-2535: ordinal not in range(128)

Hi Tom,
thanks for your hint. I changed all German characters (äöü) in Aperture in the keywords or deleted the keywords and now the import is working. Before that the fault with the nil value on index stopped the import immediately.

Worked almost with 100% success fo iPhoto. Less successful with Aperture. Copied and migrated Project and Album structure, but some folders empty, jammed at around50%, now repeatedly chokes at 27%. Any similar experiences from fellow users? Any suggestions please? Thank you. Robert

There should be a LibraryImporter.log (plain text) file in your Documents folder.

The last few (~50) lines of that file might reveal something about what’s going on. (If you double-click this file, it will likely open in the Console application, and you should be able to copy lines out of that.)

I tried to import my photos from Aperture to Lightroom using Adobe’s tool with no success. Every time I try the import stalls after about 25-27% complete. Is there a way to resume such a stalled import or do I have to start all over from scratch (only to end up with another stall …)?

If you are having trouble with the Aperture Import Plugin hanging partway through the process, we need some additional information from you. In your Documents folder you should have a file created called Library Importer.Log created during the process. This is a text file that describes what happens during the install

If you can copy and paste the last 100 lines of this file (NOT THE ENTIRE FILE) here for us to review hopefully we can get you an answer shortly.

There aren’t wide-spread reports of slower performance with LR 5.6. You may have a system specific issue. Can you share us details of what is slow and how slow it is? What specs your system has? Maybe we can get to the bottom of what is affecting you?

I downloaded this link and opened it and found that I could not import from my aperture library. My library is located on an external hd which shows up on the desktop but is grayed out when i tried to open it from the importer. If this can’t work that I won’t be using my lightroom.

I ran the plug-in, which completed. Appx. half my photos were missing, however. The log shows a lot of rotation errors. Reading the log makes me appreciate how complex such a plugin has to be in order to work as a comprehensive migration tool. It’s a good start for Adobe to assist, but I’m going back to basics, with Aperture exports for versions and originals, and into a dated folder structure. I’ll recreate collections manually … not too bad as long as you have the keywords you need.

Very impressed with the plug-in. Was not able to migrate an Aperture referenced library. It would only copy some photos. Instead needed to connect to a managed library and have Lightroom copy out and create new folders in Finder.

Still having a problem with Faces. Adobe support, after 30 minutes on the phone, confirmed that it may be a bug that it only creates one tag if more than one face tag exists in Aperture

New issue: First option to copy previews, and copying them into the new folder does work. However, it seems to exclude them from the library. I expected previews that do exist would be copied in (which they are), but also added to the Lightroom library, AND stacked with the original. The two latter actions don’t seem to be taking place. Anyone else have this issue?

Perhaps if you could describe “what is slow” and give us some statistics on “how slow it is” and some system specs, we could help you. BTW, it looks like the last two threads you’ve posted are identical posts on two different sites.

I am always happy to help diagnose slow operating Lightroom installs but I do need good information to do so. What can you tell me about your specific issues?

After reviewing the comments, it appears the plug-in is not ready for prime time. And if I tried to migrate my Aperture library to Lightroom, and the plug-in actually worked, not retaining all the adjustments made to my photos is a non starter. I don’t want to have to go back and make all the edits again.…thousands of photos. Have I misunderstood something?

It would be good if the plug-in would remember where it stopped importing last time (or know what it has imported). I haven’t had it reached 100% yet. Each time I have to delete the master folder and restart from the start as the HDD it goes on to doesn’t have enough space to reimport. Therefore the plug-in won’t let me import at all without deleting the library.

I have been using Lightroom 4/5 for almost a year for new photos but maintaining my old in Aperture. I installed the plugin yesterday and imported my 5300 image Aperture library fast, without any stalling or stopping. I’m running Mavericks on a 2014 iMac with 16GB RAM. The problems began after the import. Many photos only transferred the Aperture master versions, not the adjusted versions. I checked and found both master and versions had the same filename and version or copy name so that wasn’t the issue. I unwittingly allowed import of all my SmugMug galleries, thus a couple thousand duplicates. Many photos that were native landscape orientation imported as portrait. I had spent a solid week tidying up my Aperture library for this process making sure everything was key worded. Those keywords seem to have transferred fine, but somehow it pulled all the old keywords I had deleted from my Aperture keyword list beforehand. Just a tip, before you do this, make sure everything is key worded backwards and forwards. So I guess I’ll delete the Aperture import in Lightroom and stay with Aperture until this process works better. Very disappointed.

It took me 5 tries (at least) and some manual importing at the end, but I managed to get all my images from Aperture into Lightroom. My first attempts I was trying to do the copy method AND had it checked to pull in previews. Those always failed at about the 65% mark.

I decided to to a permissions repair on the Aperture library (hold down Command + Alt and double click the album file to get the dialogue). After this I did a DB repair. Neither of those did anything to help so I went ahead and did a DB rebuild and afterwards went into Aperture and fixed any missing references. After all that, I ran the importer with the only non-default option checked to leave the referenced files where they are (no copying). That finished at 100% and then I went into the error file and found several images that errored out and I imported them manually, also leaving them in their places.

Pain in the butt, but at least all 15k or so images are now in one place!

Does this migration tool work with Yosemite installed? I am running the latest version of Lightroom and Aperture but Lightroom will not show Aperture or iPhoto libraries. I am following instructions but no luck!

Following my partial import of my Aperture library, I have discovered that the import plugin has placed a substantial number of Aperture keywords as sub-keywords of a single (unrelated) keyword (‘London’). The keyword hierarchies in my Aperture and Lightroom libraries were identical. If I hadn’t backed up my Lightroom catalogue, I really would be quite angry now!

Adobe are surely missing an opportunity here. There must be many Aperture users such as myself ready and willing to make the transition. However, we seem to have a plugin that has not been tested fully, is not fit for purpose in many instances and in my case, has a destructive impact on catalogues.

Looks like there are three categories of issues. Those having problems installing the plugin via Creative Cloud, encountering fatal errors during the import, and those seeing unexpected results.

I might be able to speak to the latter. I’m working on some comprehensive tests now, but seem to see varying behavior in what is imported, and what is not.

The first one may be easy. For those who expect to see “finished” or “adjusted” photos in Aperture, remember a few things. First, you need to select the option to migrate them. Second, only Aperture knows how to apply Aperture’s adjustments from a master file. The Lightroom plugin is migrating Aperture “previews” (JPEGs). If you don’t have previews created, you’ll need to create them. If you want previews of some, but not all photos migrated, you’ll need to delete them. But most importantly, make sure you create full-sized previews (setting: “Don’t Limit”) before migrating so you have full-sized Aperture-adjusted images in Lightroom after conversion. (Remember: Lightroom is not going to be able to migrate adjustments to settings in their develop module.)

For those who are only seeing some files migrated to Lightroom: This seems to be a function of where the master images reside (local vs. network), and whether they are in a managed, unmanaged Aperture library. Not done with my testing, but from what I can tell, most images are “copied” to Lightroom’s master file default location if a “referenced” library is used as a source, or of the “referenced” library is on a network drive. They are more reliably copied out of an Aperture “managed” library. However, it appears you need to migrate from an Aperture “referenced” library in order for the plugin to copy both masters and previews, when the migration plugin option is chosen to copy and stack previews. This is what I’m ultimately after, and was pleased with the result. This will save me countless hours if I can get it to work.

I’m a beginner Lightroom user and not sure if I’m grasping all the moving parts or consequences, but trial an error seem to be paying off.

I’ve had limited success, but what seems to still remain, is that only one “face” from Aperture is tagged per photo in photos with more than one “face” assigned.

40,000 photo import completed! Very impressed, but I’ll at least wait for an update for faces processing before making a final attempt.

The plugin managed to import all but 200 photos. I found them by using the synchronize folder option after the migration. Can’t determine why they were not imported. Some were CR2s, some JPEG, but mostly TIFFS. They imported after the synchronize folder procedure.

Synchronize also detected several “missing” files. Forums point to a problem going back to LR3 that hasn’t been fixed. Find missing files doesn’t report anything missing.

Lightroom does a good job of stacking images, but you don’t see stacks in collections.

The faces tagging doesn’t work yet (one face per photo). And many of my keywords were scrambled. Several of the faces were put down at root level, and several faces were listed in more than one area in the keywords section. Checked in Aperture, there was just one face by that name in the UI.

Downloaded the new version and ran on a subset of my library. Verified installation using the Plugin Manager. In this case, I ran a conversion selecting all options. All but one image was “referenced” in the Aperture library.

No apparent change with Faces behavior. I thought I found one photo with two face keywords for three people, but can’t find it again. 40 or so other images with two or more faces in Aperture, have only one “face” keyword in Lightroom. Also, about 5% of face tags wind up as a root keyword, whereas the rest correctly land under “Faces from Aperture”.

Other keyword behavior does appear to be improved, in that non-face keywords seem to land in the appropriate hierarchy.

Ran my first test determining what previews are and are not copied into and stacked in Lightroom. Appears that only HALF of Aperture previews are copied over, and appears that that keywords are NOT applied to Aperture previews.

Ran another test. Had different behavior during the second round with the new plugin, with all options checked, and running against an Aperture library with referenced images.

PREVIEWS
Still testing outcomes, but I was mistaken about my comment before. Aperture creates previews for all raw files and for ADJUSTED JPEGs and TIFFs. Aperture apparently does not create previews for NON-ADJUSTED TIFFs and JPEGs. Hence, the previews were not copied. Aperture doesn’t make it easy to see when previews exist, and when they don’t. So I did file searches before and after.

FACES
Still an issue here. This time, Lightroom still generates one face keyword per raw file, but this time it CORRECTLY generated multiple face keywords for the same Aperture preview JPEG.

KEYWORDING
Keywording is different between previews and raw files. Non-face keywording works as expected for raw files, but not for Aperture preview JPEGs. The preview JPEG seems to suffer with keywords. The child, parent, and child/parent combo all seem to appear as keywords in the preview JPEG, whereas only the child keywords appear in the master (correct behavior). However, this only seems to occur in JPEG previews of other Aperture modified JPEGs, not in original JPEGs or JPEG previews from raw files.

PREVIEWS
Looks like the plugin is missing copying over half of previews. I ran a test on 1100 photos. All photos were selected and previews deleted. 82 photos were selected, and small previews were generated. Verified that, indeed, 82 previews existed in the Aperture library.

Migrated using the new plugin. Searched to find all JPEGs with _Aperture_preview.jpg appended. Only found 31 images. Some of the previews were side by side others that did not copy. I can’t find a reason why they did not copy.

Regarding the issue of Previews not being transferred over to Lightroom properly, have you renamed a lot of your Aperture Version
Names?

In my limited but frustrating testing prior to moving my entire Aperture Library over, I noticed some Previews were not being imported by LR. Upon further inspection, the common thread between all of the non-imported Previews was that they shared the same Version Name with at least one other image in the project.

I believe Aperture uses the filename as the Version Name by default, but it can be changed and in many cases I renamed my Version Names to something generic for similar images. For example, I had three images with the Version Name “Backyard” and only the Preview from one of them was imported by LR.

I went back to my Aperture Library, used Metadata > “Batch Change…” and renamed the Version Names to “Original File Name” (I had to create a new preset for this using the “Edit” item in the drop down menu). After changing the Version Names to filenames, each Version Name was now unique and upon running the LR import plug-in again it brought in all of the Previews!

I’m curious if this solves your issues as well or if the plug-in is ignoring your Previews for some other reason?

Having some problems importing from aperture.
Plug in version is 1.0.989918 (This is what I am getting from the links on this page).
I have broken up my aperture lib into several smaller libraries. But some are shown has undetermined number of images, when attempting to import these I get “Failed to obtain image version information from….”

Very small libraries have imported ok, but this is now taking a frustrating amount of time.

I love being able to push a button and have lots of things happen as a result and was glad to use this plug. ONe question I have is why is it so very slow. I did a test on a small lirbrary 500+ images and had to leave it over night. I cant imagine letting it loose on the 35,430 images on my main library. What is the most efficient way to move the mother load?

One other comment:
Make sure you keep testing. Even the updated plug-in does not do all that it advertises yet. If you care about faces, the new version does not keyword master images correctly (it does the previews). Keywords are not copied consistently. And only 1/3 of previews are copied in my tests. See my posts above for more information. If you’re fine with what it doesn’t do yet, go ahead with the conversion. Just remember, there’s no do-over once you adopt your old Aperture images into your new Lightroom catalog.

All these comments make me reluctant to try any migration, especially since I’ll have to learn another program. What about waiting until “Phptos,” perhaps it and PS will be adequate for all of us unhappy Aperture users?

I have eventually got my library across to Lightroom after breaking Aperture library into small segment. However I have in excess of 3500 files which show ! and photo is missing.

They appear to have not copied across to the lightroom folder on my hdd. Files are def in Aperture library. These were identified after doing a build smart preview.
There doesn’t appear to be an obvious way to find these missing files. Manually moving them is not an ideal solution.

All “original”, “managed” files (originals stored within the library package) are copied over to the folder specified with the plug-in. Depending what option you choose, “original” “referenced” files are either copied over to that same folder, or they are left in place.

Perhaps the images that did not make it over were referenced files, and you left them in place in the option selection? Was your drive with these images disconnected? If you did several batches, could you have not selected the same options each time?

Find a file or two that did not copy over. Look in the log file under ~/Documents. See if you can find what happened.

Could also try using a program like EasyFind (App Store) to search for the file. Make sure you search in all locations, and turn on the option to search within packages. Is the image in your original library still under /Masters ? is it in one of your piecemeal Aperture library exports? (Not sure which library you said you found it in.)

Although there are a handful of issues preventing me from converting to Lightroom now, plug-in seems to have correctly handled the copy of all “original” files for me, whether managed or referenced, across a library with tens of thousands of images.

Breaking the Aperture library into smaller sections didn’t help. However, I found a handful of slideshows and an iphoto book that has been in the lib for years. To cut a long story short, I removed these from the aperture library and started again , importing the whole library in one go and created a new LR library. Worked perfectly:-)
Now I need to learn the different terminology.

Any suggestions on how to prepare photos in iPhoto before using the utility to migrate the photos to LR5?
I’ve been lazy and used iPhoto the past three years when I should have kept on using LR. One of the hazards of buying into it “just works” for Apple products. My iPhoto catalog seems rather bloated.

I’d like to keep the modified pictures but with all the metatada I have added (faces, gps, keywords, events, and albums. I hope the camera information is transferred too so I can filter by camera and lens. I did notice that some of the dates are off, but that can be an apple/IOS 8.0 problem.

It would be helpful to have a guide on what to do after the utility is run – duplicate checks, stacking, changing the way we import and process pictures if we are used to using iPhoto, making use of some sort of “photo stream” to have the photos on the mac, iPhone, and iPad devices. Victoria alluded to LR Mobile being able to do something like this, but a step by step tutorial would help.

I want to completely get rid of iPhoto, but still be able to use the Photostream if possible. Will be upgrading to Yosemite in the next couple of days. Using LR5 standalone with an old version of Photoshop CS5.5. The 2GB limitations worry me in terms of usefulness in using the cloud to keep devices synched up.

Wrote this at 1am and hope it makes sense. Look forward to seeing you guys soon at another local SF Lightroom User’s Group Meetup. I learn something every time I attend and appreciate everything you do.

My iPhoto Library (which I have used in Aperture the later years) is 1,76TB. It has 103945 photos. I did learn from this attempt that I probably should remove the photostream from my iPhoto library before starting since those photos allready exist inside the Library.

Why is this so hard? Can maybe Adobe give us some pointers as to how to find useful data about what went wrong so that we can pass on to the developers of this plugin?

Aperture Importer is still downloading as v1.0.989918 with a date of Oct 31 21:34 though it’s listed as 1.0.1 from where it’s downloaded.
1. Have you successfully used Aperture Importer v1.0.989918?
2. Is Aperture Importer ACTUAL v1.0.1 available some other way or place?
3. I talked to tech support in India over a week ago and they said 1.0.1 was coming out then. Does anybody know the timeline for this?
4. Does anyone know what v1.0.989918 doesn’t do that it is expected to do?

Mr. G and Greg. From what some of us understand, v1.0.989918 IS v1.0.1
There were some changes to how keywording worked, but it appears the main focus was on folks who have issues with the migration halting through the conversion. I’ve documented several other remaining issues with keywording and preview handling that remain, so I won’t switch over until that time. Hopefully, before my trail expires.

Mr. G: Most of the folks are doing conversions from Aperture. I know that the library structure for the new iPhoto is relatively similar, but that may be something to look into. I’ve converted a 40,000 image Aperture library, and some have larger. 103,000 photos may be the largest of anyone that has posted so far.

Another option would be to split your library into something smaller, just to see if it works. Also, look at the log that the plug-in generates and stores in your documents folder.

I actually did get the import to finish without incident. It took quite a while before the counter moved from 0% but once it started going, it kept going pretty steadily. I had about 1.08 TB worth of photos. Now I have to do some re-org, as the folders are not split out the way I like them. I expected that. I do like that my Aperture projects were kept intact, so I can convert or move to collections. For me it was pretty seamless except for one thing.

Anyway, my question is about how the photos were processed upon import. I shoot primarily in RAW but it looks like when the photos were moved into Lightroom, they were all turned into JPG. Is that how it should have worked? I would have preferred moving everything to DNG. I do recall looking at the options and not seeing anything about this. The article above also does not specify, and the help online is not very helpful. Any advice would be appreciated!

II’ve tried to import my Aperture v3.4.5 library (55000 images) with Lightroom’s 5.7 built-in importer (1.0.989918)
Every time I changed an option in the “Options” dialog Lightroom spent 20 minutes or so doing something, with Python working overtime on 1 CPU. When it finished, the “Import” button remained disabled and the number of files and disk space remained “undetermined”. No error message, so had no clue what was wrong. Then found this thread and looked for the log file. Sure, there it was, the same error that others have reported as well:
2014-11-20 21:05:59 +0000, INFO Failed to get info on image versions with error Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/imageVersions.py", line 350, in
result = getVersionInfoFromDB( unicode( sys.argv[ 1 ], 'utf-8' ) )
File "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/imageVersions.py", line 274, in getVersionInfoFromDB
masterImagePath = os.path.join( currentMasterVolumePath, row[ 2 ] )
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/posixpath.py", line 66, in join
if b.startswith('/'):
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'startswith'

Getting same error Arum refers to. But I can’t find the file he references. Any ideas on how to get the import dialog box to determine the image count and size? This keeps preventing Import from working once I press the blue button.

Arun:
Your fix worked for me. I’m using version 1.0.989918, the current version of the plug-in, and it doesn’t have this fix incorporated, even though two months have elapsed since you found the bug. Adobe could save alot of heartburn among migrating users by adding these couple of lines of Python.

I’ve found that I’ve had to split my 180GB Aperture library into smaller pieces to get the plugin to work at all. It’s worked with a piece that was about 20GB. Don’t know what the upper limit is.

I am finding an error in the LibraryImporter.log that looks like the problem Arun describes. Unfortunately, I can’t find the file Arun references to make the edit. I have been able to successfully import 1 of 3 Aperture Libraries. It was ~1GB, but the remaining two are ~140GB and 67GB. The error message after pressing Import is something along the lines of failed to import because importer was unable to get information about the library.

I think I am having the same problem Arun describes. I have successfully completed 1 import (1 GB) but the other two libraries (67 and 140 GB) continue failing. I can’t find the file Arun references to make the edit in the Python code. Any help is appreciated.

Hi Arun,
I get the same error message in my log and no fix from Adobe yet. Seems you have a fix with a file you can send out. I’m not a programmer, though, but not afraid of trying things out with some good advice. I understand you have created a file that provides a fix to this problem. Is this anything you would let me use as well? Leave you my e-mail here if you’d like to send me the file and some instructions how to use it: berthold(at)doerrich.de
Thanks!

Another tip, sorta related to importing from Aperture/iPhoto. After I successfully imported my very large (78,000 photos, 750G) Aperture library into Lightroom (it took more than two days), I found that the disk I had put the Lightroom library on was very slow. Lightroom has a built-in feature by which you can simply move folders from one disk to another. *DO NOT DO THIS!* The algorithm appears to be at least n^2 complexity, and gets slower and slower as folders are transferred over.

After two days, I realized it was going to take weeks to finish, so I aborted it and found a different solution:

* Move all the folders over to the other disk manually, using the terminal, or the finder
* Each folder in lightroom will now have a little ? badge on it
* Right mouse button -> Find Missing folder for each folder, and point it to the new location

I tried to migrate my Aperture library to Lightroom with plugin version 1.0.989918. The process run without problems, but I’m missing some metadata: At least GPS info have not been copied (I tried first to import from an Aperture library with masters inside the library, then I tried to relocate masters from within Aperture and importing them from this position into Lightroom with the plugin).

Also on some pictures the date/time is wrong – Aperture shows the correct time (in a different timezone), but in Lightroom the shown time differs by 1 hour (I remember that I imported these file with a wrong timezone setting an corrected the time afterwards in Aperture – this corrected value seems to not finding its way to Lightroom).

Another thing that I’m missing is the manual sort order of pictures in albums. Is there any way to reconstruct my manual sort order from Aperture in Lightroom (I have pictures in multiple albums at different positions, so a simple renaming of the files would not suffice).

Thoroughly agree. The importer should be able to capture user-added GPS coordinates from Aperture. I have been trying a workaround using Aperture’s Export Metadata command but it is painful and requires a run through Excel to reformat the output, use of a web utility that creates gpx track files from a text version of the Excel output, then Autotagging the photos in the Lr map module. Slow and not enjoyable.

Another missing feature of the importer is the ability to get Version Names from Aperture as these are the easiest ways of titling images in Aperture but are not passed through at all with the current importer.

Just ran the plugin – All up it took between 36 & 48 hours (I was at work). It seems to have done what it says -colours, faces, stacks and keywords, are all imported with keywords. All my projects and events have come across as Collections – it has made a mess of the labels of a few of them but you can work it out.

HOWEVER – I think only a fraction of my RAWS actually made it across. After a bit of digging, it looks like where I hade made the jpeg the original in Aperture (so the Raw is sitting behind it), it has only taken across the jpeg. Where the Raw was the original, it has taken that. This may prove to be quite frustrating as I now need to compare my raws in both programs to make sure I can identify what is missing, and then find a way to get them across and into the correct folders, projects, etc, so I can work with them.

Did Lightroom 5.7.1 ship with a new version of the Aperture Plugin?
As a current licensed owner of Photoshop, I’m not interested in a subscription until I’m sure I can migrate my Aperture library to Lightroom, and subsequently then begin using Lightroom.

Plugin v1.0.1 (aka 1.0.987068) that is distributed with Lightroom 5.7leaves metadata and previews in an undesirable state.

Thank you for the nice article on the Aperture Lightroom plug-in (and pointer to the latest version).

I have an Aperture Library of roughly 55,000 photos in multiple projects (MANAGED by Aperture, expect for about 15 files which were REFERENCED). I first repaired the library I tried the Lightroom plug-in and it was stuck at 3% complete. Reading the log file didn’t enlighten me to any particular problems (it looked like warning messages rather than any particular error). Then I tried exporting each project into a separate library (from 30GB to 250GB each) and couldn’t get the plug-in to handle ANY of them to completion. 🙁 The plug-in seems to need more maturity — or at least needs better, human readable error logs.

Fortunately, I found Aperture Exporter (AE), a stand alone Application (that needs Aperture to be open and uses its export capability). I used it to export my entire library — it came to a bit over 1TB, with the options I selected (4*+ were saved as 16 bit TIFFs) without much trouble, thought it took about 30 hours. I had a couple of minor problems when I tried it first [too many tmp files for my small-ish boot drive, but also my mistake of including all the (huge) smart ALBUMS in the export]. I sent a message to the developer a few days ago and he was very responsive and incorporated a fix and released an updated version of the software (1.2.0.1 now).

The software costs about $15 or so, but if you are continuing to have problems with the Lightroom plug-in, it is certainly worth a look. I have no financial interest in that company – just a happy customer. Also, perhaps Adobe’s plug-in developers should compare notes with the AE creator.

Do you mind me asking, were you able to then import into Lightroom? Face tags and location data as well? How does it handle master / Aperture previews? Are they stacked, or treated as separate images? Or perhaps it only copies one or the other? Are keywords, face keywords, and locations applied to adjusted images as well?

When will Aperture Import into LR work on Windows? (I cannot install LR on my Mac as this runs OS X 10.5.8)
I can install and start ‘aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin’ under LR 5.7.1. on Win 8.1.but cannot select the .aplibrary-‘file’ via the open-file-dialog as this under Windows is just a directory.

I just loaded LR5.7 (perpetual license) today, and am trying to import from Aperture. It seems the plug-in is no longer a plug-in but rather, incorporated into the Import function. I have my Aperture libraries on an external hard drive, in case that makes a difference. When I select my hard drive folder that contains my Aperture libraries, it does not show my individual Aperture libraries and I get “No photos found”. Any suggestions?

Just came across this post by accident and so glad I did. Been wanting to migrate to lightroom from aperture for quite some time after a photographer friend showed me the sync capabilities and overall workflow speed compared to aperture. Going to download the free trial today, if it does what it say’s on the tin I will be very happy indeed.

I just attempted to migrate from Aperture to Lightroom using the plug-in. It appears that all my project hierarchy came over in the Collections, but not the photos. In Aperture, I had a separate Project by year which I imported my photos to for tagging and editing; the Years are all there, but nothing inside. Does anyone have any suggestions to get the photos over? Thanks.

Have downloaded the latest version of Lightroom 5 including the plug-in and tried to import photos from the latest version of Aperture. GPS metadata added within Aperture are not transferred to Lightroom. Only GPS metadata added outside Aperture (e.g. iPhone photos) transfers. I have tried to use the “Write metadata to file” in Aperture BEFORE import into Lightroom but without any luck. What am I doing wrong?

Adobe’s Aperture Importer tool (plug-in) in Lightroom 5.7.1 is not working with “large” Aperture files.
The plug-in starts fine but never determines the number of photos or other attributes from the Aperture file.
If you do a very small subset of the Aperture file (exporting a few projects into a tiny new Aperture library file), then the Adobe Importer tools works. However, when you try to use the importer tool on larger Aperture library files it fails.
Is anybody at Adobe looking at this and attempting to resolve it?

The importer starts the “Evaluatiing Aperture Library” process showing the progress bar before the user is able to select a library to import or a location for the imported library. Therefore, the user can’t cancel the process or select any options.

I’m pretty sure that the problem is that my main Aperture Library is too large > 1.5 TB. A smaller library imported fine, and the aforementioned progress bar displayed for just a few seconds before allowing me to select locations for import/export and options.

I’ll just manage what I want to bring into LR using Apertures Library functions. The rest will stay put.

Jan: I’d be surprised if library size on the file system is an issue, unless you have images that exceed the destination volume’s capacity, or the destination volume’s file size limit per image. How many images do you have in your library? That might be your issue. I have 43,000 images, think I’ve seen folks with at least 65,000 images and perhaps up to 85,000 images migrate successfully, although that is coming from memory.

I just installed Lightroom 5.7 for Mac – tried to migrate my aperture library but all the choices after selecting the plug in extras are gray (except for the aperture import info selection)
What am I missing?
Thanks so much

I want to import my photos from Aperture, and I have used the path described by LR (LR> File> Auxiliary Module Options> Import from Aperture library). It all seems to be set correctly, but the “IMPORT” – Button “flashes” in a short time and is grayed out from then on, it is not possible to import. What do I do?
Thank You

Trying to import from managed Aperture/iPhoto libraries. I like that Albums and Events are translated to Lightroom as Collections and have been able to transfer most Previews for adjusted photos, but Previews do not appear in Lightroom Collections – only Masters. Thus I am faced with either readjusting hundreds of photos to have the best photo appear in the albums or I have to manually view each master photo to see what albums it is included in, move the Preview to these albums, and delete the Master – both time prohibitive tasks. Am I missing something that would help?

I’m having the same issue as several other posters where I have followed all steps but the “import” button is still greyed out. It flashes blue for a split second, then reverts back to being greyed out

My library is not big, about 30,000 images. I ran the importer, it completed and gave me a short list of images it could not do (I have no clue as to why). Ignoring that, much metadata (all?) that I manually entered in Aperture is missing. My library has jpg and NEF files. I’m still investigating the jpgs but I am certain that all manually entered metadata for the NEFs is missing.

Skipping the Lightroom importer, I tried a test with a few images from Aperture. I used Aperture’s “export originals” with the option to write the metadata to XMP. Lightroom imports the NEFs but imports none of the metadata form the associated XMP files. I ran a number of these XMP files through an XML verifier. They are all syntactically correct XML but apparently Lightroom does not “like them.”

Lightroom does actually read XMP files. I wrote one from Lightroom, modified it with an editor and read it back. The mods showed up in Lightroom.

Adobe will blame Apple, Apple will blame Adobe, and customers will be ignored.

I’m trying to do the import from Aperture using the plugin available in LR 5.7.1 and I’m having the following issues:

1. The order of images is not preserved. After import the collections representing projects, albums, and slideshows have random image order when I try to sort by “added order” or “custom order”… I’d expect the original order is preserved here. Not sure if Adobe is going to fix this. Tech support doesn’t seem to be willing to forward the problem to the engineering group…

2. The previews for images having adjustments are imported as additional masters, yes. But they are only visible in folders view and in the “Photos Adjusted in Aperture” collection. I’d expect the adjusted versions are visible in all other collections as well. In collections representing albums and slideshows actually having the adjusted images visible is even more desired than the original RAWs…

I am trying to use the plug-in to convert my Aperture files to Lightroom. The problem is that I have been opening my original iPhoto files with Aperture so the file looks like an iPhoto file and the plugin doesn’t seem to recognize the file(greyed out,not a selectable choice) Can I convert this iPhoto file and retain the aperture modifications that I have made? thanks MR

I have a 2T photo archive operated as an Aperture referenced library (meaning that the photos themselves are filed outside of Aperture). I’m switching to Lightroom for the more active parts of the archive (i.e., all new photos, plus various other older projects/folders/albums). I’ll probably eventually move all of it into Lightroom, but no rush. To do the move, I’ve created new Aperture libraries that are limited in scope (e.g., a series grouped by order number of images scanned from negatives by an outside vendor, as well as a series of digital images shot with various digital cameras that relate to family genealogy). Then I use the Lightroom plug-in to move each Aperture library into my Lightroom Catalog — each time, a very large number of images fail to make the move and I get the message “Some items were not imported from the Aperture Library” and a lengthy list by file name of what didn’t transfer over. I can find no rhyme or reason to the images that didn’t transfer. All are “online” in Aperture, and in each case tell the plug-in to leave the originals in their current location. Those that do transfer come across just fine, with all the expected metadata attached. Any ideas?

I was having the same problems as everyone else importing my Aperture Lightroom.

However, the new version of Lightroom CC has changed the plugin, and now I was able to install my entire Aperture database of 23k images for the first time. Thank You Adobe. Now I can work with just Lightroom going forward.

Hi.
I had trouble with the plugin. However, it’s far easier to do the following.
In Aperture;
1) select all of your photos (yes all!) and go to file option metadata and select ‘write IPTC metadata to original’ (this applies all your metadata to your files).
2) if you haven’t already, change all photo’s to reference files (even if you keep them on your harddisk) – file, relocate originals (I suggest you relocate them to a date based hierarchy)
3) nearly done – just import the files into a lightroom collection (I did a year at a time) and then recreate any smart collections based on ratings (etc) you may have (lightroom will load the metadata you’ve embedded ono the photos on step one).

I know it is easiest to criticize, but if the iPhoto/Aperture import plugin available in Lightroom and heavily advertised by Adobe is best they can do, then God help us!

My story: I have 15 years of iPhoto and Aperture libraries, one library per year, ranging from 1 GB to 150 GB. For a start I tried with a 9 GB library; I connected a USB3 HDD with the Library, and a USB3 HDD into the other USB3 port on my MacBook Pro Retina 15″ fully specced (mind you, a rather strong machine) while Lightroom was running off of an internal SSD. So we have as few bottlenecks as possible. After about four hours and completely turning off energy savings I gave up!

I’m now importing all to the new Photos App, this time consolidating all those separate year libraries in Aperture into a single library first. I will sorely miss the possibilities of Lightoom (even in their horrid, abysmal interface), but if a 10 GB library was 40% done after four hours, I don’t consider it possible to convert my 1TB or so of libraries.

Adobe support checked out this blog months ago, and Adobe Support will likely never answer this question. Does anyone else have insight as to whether Adobe plans to support the importation of photos with Aperture Faces and people tags in Lightoom? I am aware it currently imports faces as plain tags, without facial coordinates.

I tried to import my iPhotos library to LR. Two questions: 1. Not all my photos transferred. I received a log at the end that showed it failed to import (approximately 75 images). Does anyone know what the problem is? Should I erase and try again, or can I do another import and just try to download the previously failed items?

and 2. I had my iPhoto library organized into events. Can I keep my photos organized in events in LR? It just seemed to import them by date.

I would try to reimport the images that failed to import. Make sure other applications can read the files (in the case where they may be corrupt or damaged). Yes, you can organize photos into named collections for each event, or use keywords or specific dates, to auto-magically sort the images into Smart Collections.

Will this iPhoto Importer work if I have iPhoto ’08 (7.5.1)? The Adobe plugin tells me “your selection does not appear to be an iPhoto library. (The importer plug-in expects version 9.5.1 or newer.)” That sounds like a problem. I don’t know how to upgrade my iPhoto version even if I wanted to — does Apple still sell iPhoto?

Any other options to preserve my metadata and perhaps stack the original and edited pictures?

Meh, this importer plugin is all but useless. I have 18000 photos in my Aperture library that I want to import and right now the importing proceeds at 4 images per minute, meaning it’ll run for 75 hours at least. If there is a power outage or I close the lid on this laptop by mistake, I have to restart it all as the dumb plugin can not resume an import. I don’t even copy the originals, I only want it to import the meta data (about 500 MB in total according to the importer, a tiny amount of data, should take a few minutes only to import that). I suspect it’s downloading all the images from my NAS just to make some preview or whatnot. Idiotic, it should do that later, when needed only and in the background, not during the import. It also seems to mess up the project structure, putting a huge number of folders in the root of the importer project tree. Of course I can not look more closely at what it does, as it’s a modal dialog that blocks the entire LR from me. So I’ll have to wait a week and hope it succeeds and only then take a look at the damage it probably has. I hope I can salvage it manually.

I only bought Lightroom 6 because it had as a big selling point “Aperture import”. Had I known it was this awful I would never have bought the update. So caveat emptor, if you have big libraries you need to import I’d stay far away from this plugin.

So, now I decided to split my Aperture library into small chunks and import them one by one so that each chunk could be completed in under a day. On the Aperture side that was trivial to do and fast.

After trying to import the first of these small libraries the importer yet again shows how buggy it is. I’ve deselected the option for copying the photos and want to leave them where they are. Yet the importer copies the photos into the Pictures/LightroomMasters/ folder. No, why the hell? I don’t have disk space for that, I keep the masters on a large NAS for a reason. What can I do about that?

Also the importer now for some unexplainable reason seems to place all photos in individual directories for each day, giving projects like 2013-07-25, 2013-07-26 etc. That will be a major pain in the lower regions to clean up.

Gosh, had I know how awful and buggy the plugin is I’d have never bought this thing. So, so disappointed right now.

I just downloaded the latest Lightroom as of June 2015. I have used Aperture exclusively until now. I began the importing task using the plug in. After 3-4 days, it was 17% done on one of my 3 libraries. I needed to stop the process and do some other things, so I started poking around what Lr had imported. It was an unqualified disaster.

1-2 photos per date. Random pictures in each date that were not taken on that date or that year. The randomization was stunning, made absolutely no sense. I did have a few files that I recognized with larger imports. One photo shoot had over 800 pictures, only 117 imported. It ignored the remaining.

I’m glad I stopped the importer. I’ll leave Aperture up and running and make my old macbook pro a legacy system,t he conversion to Lightroom is going to be terrible. I’ll just start with all new photos going into lightroom and keep aperture photos in aperture

It looks like the guys from Adobe lost interest in this thread about eight months ago! I landed in LR about two months ago as a refugee from Aperture. I have been busy learning my way around LR & PS and only exporting a few CR2 files from Aperture to a folder, importing them in to LR and setting up how to best organise things. I am very pleased with the editing capabilities inside LR and can get a lot more out my images. PS will take me a while to learn but it all looks great.

The part that is a real bear right now is importing my Aperture library into LR. I tested this on three very small libraries (<50 images) and while it was slow it seemed tolerable. Now I have created a 2,200 image library of CR2 files with previews using the same settings that I experimented with but the progress is ridiculously slow. It is now 38 hours later and 99% of the process is complete. My iMac has the 4-core i7 processor so there are 8 virtual CPUs but LR appears to be using only one of them and it's at 100%. The machine has 20GB RAM and there is 6~7 GB free, 400GB of free HDD. LR is able to use the GPU. I don't think the machine is being overly taxed by the task. In the meantime I can't even use LR and because I inserted an SD card to copy some files to Finder, LR now has the import screen displayed and I can't dismiss it and can no longer see the file count progressing. This whole process is extremely frustrating. I have about 60,000 images in Aperture that I had planned to transition but at this rate of progress I probably won't live long enough to see it completed! ;-(

Another issue I have already noticed is that GPS data is not always preserved. All my images are geotagged either by the camera (iPhone, 5D3 with GP-E2, Sony HX9V, etc); or, by using GeoTagr on the iPhone to create a track which is correlated with the image capture time and the metadata written accordingly; or, manually by dragging and dropping on the map in Aperture. Everything shows up just fine in Aperture, iPhoto, Photos. Before importing to LR I always use Aperture to write IPTC metadata to the original files and force the generation of new previews. However, many images are missing GPS when they arrive in LR. It seems that the previews created during import to bake-in the Aperture adjustments do contain GPS but many of the the associated CR2 files do not. For CR2 files that have not been adjusted some have GPS and some do not. iPhone images seem to transfer OK. I haven't figured out all the permutations yet. Any advice?

I am looking forward to having more powerful editing tools but this process of importing and its propensity to drop metadata is just awful. In fact it is so awful that I am thinking that I must be doing something very wrong. Surely Adobe didn't unleash something that performs this badly… or did they??? Can anyone tell me what I have messed up?? Please!

I made the mistake of migrating my Aperture Library to a Drobo with insufficient space to hold all 30,000 photos so the only part of the library moved over–about 20,00 photos. Now that I’ve upgraded the capacity in the Drobo, if repeat the migration from Aperture to LR (using the LR CC plungin again) will all the files migrate or only those that didn’t move the first time. I clearly don’t want to have 20,000 duplicates in the LP catalog.

I also had my aperture library import some to a grinding pace after 32% completion (only imported 100 pictures over 2 days after hitting 17,000) and here are the last few lines of what the libraryImporter.log says and after that the TXT file it generated after I stopped the import. Now what do I do?????????????